There are big shortages in engineering, IT, and health care in Japan but I'm not sure if that would account for a shortage that big.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown by type of work and industry.  The disappointed job seekers are univ grads looking for prestige jobs, aren't they? (sorry, haven't had a change to read the articles in that thread.) The labourer/trades situation might be different.

Japan has relied on immigrant temp manual workers. Is it possible tighter immigration policy is throwing a wrench in that supply and many Japanese aren't willing to do those kinds of jobs? (When I was a student there, Japan had created special visa arrangement to allow huge numbers of Iranians to work in Japan.) On second thought, hasn't Japan been paying Japanese Brazilians to go home in the downturn? Again, what industries are we talking about.

As for health care [edit: I was thinking nurses, but it's actually doctors], I think they're trying to reduce the number of "entertainer" visas issued to women from other Asian countries (mostly Philippines) and instead train them for nursing/caregiver jobs to handle the ever-expanding seniors bulge. I was under the impression not enough Japanese women are interested in those jobs.

There's also a need for experienced intl bankers and lawyers, but I don't see those types of jobs skewing the numbers.

With the prestige of big companies and urban lifestyle, are young people less willing to work in small and med businesses in more outlying areas? I see articles about Japanese men in rural areas needing to import wives from SE Asia and wonder where the Japanese women disappeared to.

The graph says "% of respondents". Maybe that created some distortion? [edit: each employer's worth 1 count regardless of the number of workers needed, types of employers who choose to participate, etc.]

Last edited by Thora (2012 June 06, 5:39 am)

kitakitsune wrote:

JAPAN: TOP 10 JOBS EMPLOYERS ARE HAVING DIFFICULTY FILLING
1. Engineers
2. Sales Reps
3. Accounting and Finance
4. Technicians
5. IT Staff
6. Sales Managers
7. IT Managers
8. Doctors and Other Nonnursing
9. Customer Service
10. Supervisors

Sales reps?! Seriously?!
I love that supervisors is at the bottom of that; least THAT facet fits my image of Japan. Japan has a mountain of people looking to work middle management pencil pusher jobs. Thats basically what most people go to Uni for hoping to get out of college.

The engineering thing doesn't surprise me though. You look at any large econ country in the world and the number one thing they list that they don't have enough of is engineers. You hear it ALL. THE. *******. TIME. in the US. However, what I have heard instead is that this is largely BS because plenty of people graduate with STEM degrees and then suddenly realize that the degree is largely just as useless as most other degrees. A lot of what companies want are people with years of experience/nich people. Other problem is no one is willing to PAY for people with experience.

I think its most interesting that healthcare is low on that list though considering there's this supposed looming issue with not enough healthcare workers for the coming surge in old people.

Also soft skills is brought up too. Especially a problem with "lack of motivation" in Japan.

I remember reading an article about people interviewing for a news company. I believe the CEO or some high ranking editor was sitting on the interview panel. He had asked them "What stuff do you read?" or "What do you think about~?" and the interviewees gave these wishy-washy answers that annoyed the editor. Basically he was complaining that people had become too Japanese and had no backbone whatsoever.

The product of their creation.

kitakitsune, thanks for the info.

wrote:

Is there a huge mis-match in the kind of skills that are required in the market, compared to what is coming out of Japanese universities?

I noticed that for the Americas group one strategy to solve the talent mismatch was to work with the universities. This strategy didn't appear on the Asia Pacific groups list. This applies more to engineering than some of the other jobs, though (which could be trained in-house more easily.)

Investment in training might be a more viable solution in Japan as there's still less job movement. Elsewhere, you'd think paying for experience/qualifications would be a safer bet.

If, as the report indicates, the aging/retiring workforce is the main problem, that would suggest a serious lack of planning, don't you think? Seems like there must be some other reason for those numbers.

It wasn't clear to me whether this is limited to domestic hires or includes foreign hires as well. The list of hard skills includes speaking skills as well as foreign language ability. Ability to speak one's native language is a problem? If it includes foreign employees, then the complaints about inter-personal skills and motivation become a different issue. It would also affects salary competitiveness.

Matt, low salaries were indeed mentioned as a problem, particularly for engineers in Japan.  Seems like a simple fix.  I noticed (for Asia Pacific) that  13% of employers (too lazy to check %) listed candidates were unwilling to work for offered salary, but we don't know if they accepted better pay in the respective country or not. 9% of companies were willing to start paying more.

I'm now curious how many engineering grads end up doing actual engineering work. I have 3 engineers in my family (mechanical and physics)  and only one of them ever worked as an engineer (and only for a few years before getting into mgmt.) Amongst their engineer friends, very few do engineering work.  Seems like a waste of education/skills when I see how in demand they are globally. Is this common?

Without looking, I'd bet IT salaries probably fall in the $60-80k range. Its always been my impression with Japan that not very many people make over $100k a year (7.9M Yen).

Actually I just googled a bit (IT　平均年収）. Behold!
http://www.itranking.net/yearlyincome.php　
The companies in the 31-60 rank range are 7.0M yen - 7.9M yen which is just shy of $100k so I guess if you get a decent company then you can make a decent amount. I imagine average salary doesn't count for those taking entry level spots though.

Japanese business culture is a cancer on society. Its to blame for almost all of Japan's major problems.

callmedodge wrote:

The problem is that engineering courses in university don`t teach you how to be an engineer, at least anymore. They give you the basics and a foundation knowledge that can then be built upon in specific fields.

Are you sure this is a failure of the schools though? Or is it merely a failure of the students? I mean considering how university tends to function in the Japanese system, I would almost believe its the fault of the students for not applying themselves. I HAVE heard however that students in STEM degrees tend to actually apply themselves to their studies though compared to humanities.

Purrlsta wrote:

matto wrote:

Maybe if Japanese companies actually paid decent salaries for IT jobs, they wouldn't have so much trouble filling them.

On average how much do IT people get paid in Japan?

I haven't worked in IT for a Japanese company but friends who have have told me that generally IT people get paid 1万/month times their age.  So a 25 year old would be making 25万 per month, a 30-year old, 30万 per month and so on which is ridiculously low.

They have also mentioned that, in general, IT people are generally just seen as monkeys to fulfill orders which probably goes hand in hand with the low salaries.

I don`t understand why people use Japanese words to explain things that we clearly have English for in debates in English. Who are you trying to impress?

I`ll be back later with a full reply when I have time.

matto wrote:

I haven't worked in IT for a Japanese company but friends who have have told me that generally IT people get paid 1万/month times their age.  So a 25 year old would be making 25万 per month, a 30-year old, 30万 per month and so on which is ridiculously low.

They have also mentioned that, in general, IT people are generally just seen as monkeys to fulfill orders which probably goes hand in hand with the low salaries.

Those are normal salaries for entry level jobs throughout most industries in Japan. The yearly salary growth of 100,000 yen is actually higher than normal (assuming no change in responsibilities - ie. not moving up the ladder) since most companies peg their salary increases to the inflation rate.

What you are forgetting though is bonuses. They can be a significant percentage of their yearly salary....

They do get bonuses right? If they didn't, I would think your friends were some kind of dispatched temp type of employee. And those people are indeed the bottom of the barrel in the Japanese business world.

Last edited by kitakitsune (2012 June 07, 7:52 pm)

vix86 wrote:

Because saying "full time worker" doesn't quite reflect what a 正社員 has (secure employment usually long term, benefits, pension, upward career movement). A dispatch worker (派遣） is basically full time, but in no way the same.

I also forget English words but remember them in Japanese. But we've had this argument in another thread, so I won't bother with it here.

If you`re using Japanese on a daily basis I can understand you`re second reasoning. And yes, "Full-time worker" doesn`t cover that but "career" does. It`s just a pain having to copy and paste into a translator. Not all of us are fluent.

Edit: But yes, no more on this.

Last edited by callmedodge (2012 June 07, 7:55 pm)

Unfortunately I`m viewing this at a computer in work and I can`t install anything that`s already pre-approved. So, I`m stuck using IE8.0.